The process of buying, selling or even just financing real estate generally involves a great deal of documentation. Most of the documentation involved requires redundant personal information and signatures of the parties. What is more, the financing involved in real estate transactions can include lengthy applications that often need to be completed more than once if financing is being sought from more than one potential lender.
Another aspect of real estate transactions involves the scheduling and coordination of the parties and finances involved. This generally includes buyers, sellers, attorneys, real estate settlement providers, real estate agents, financial institution representatives, and others. All these people need to schedule a mutually convenient meeting time and place for the closing.
Also, a reconciliation of funds being transferred between parties must be coordinated so that the closing will be funded properly. Many different real estate professionals, branches of government and others must be paid at or near the closing date. This whole process is often made difficult by last minute adjustments in the agreed upon loan rates, taxes due and other variables.
Real estate transactions are further complicated by the fact that much of the information contained in the required documentation is often transferred or translated manually from the forms that were completed by hand to an electronic medium such as a computer. The involved real estate attorney, real estate settlement provider, Realty Company, Title Company or financial institution, often does such a transfer. The information, once stored in electronic form, can then be delivered to mortgage banks, financial institutions, government sponsored agencies, document custodians or can even be used by word processing software for completing the forms and documentation needed in “closing” the real estate transaction. Not only is this manual transfer or translation of data cumbersome, but also it is time consuming and prone to typographical and other errors.
Once the mortgage transaction is closed, copies of the final documents are usually stored or maintained by the attorneys, mortgage banks, financial institutions, and document custodians involved in the real estate transaction. The shear bulk of the papers impose significant storage costs to the professionals involved. This cost can be further exaggerated when copies of the documentation are translated to microfiche, scanned to electronic format or other means of long-term mass document storage.
What is more, the information obtained during the real estate transaction is very valuable to professionals regularly involved in these transactions. This information includes detailed demographic data about the parties. Professionals often use such information for marketing or follow-up promotions of their goods or services. Also, the non-confidential aspects of this information can be sold or traded to companies that collect consumer data. For this reason, it is important that certain parts of the information collected be translated and stored in a database or any easy to use means of data storage and retrieval.
Currently, the majority of the real estate mortgage industry still uses very antiquated methods for preparing closing documents. The sale and financing of real estate has historically been associated with a great deal of paper documentation due to longstanding statutes and laws requiring written, signed and notarized documents for the legal transfer of land and to bind lenders and borrowers to the terms of fair loan agreements. Most often typewriters or even word processors are used, but the completed documents are not stored electronically. Also, during the process of generating the necessary documents, much of the data is repeated throughout the documents. Such repetition wastes time and is prone to human error.
Some companies have developed more sophisticated methods of preparing mortgage documents and handling the data needed for this process. For example, EDS™ (Electronic Data Systems Corp.) have developed what they call the Accelerated Closing and Delivery Services (ACDS). This system is designed to handle and transfer mortgage closing data, while reducing or even eliminated the amount of paper needed for a mortgage closing. Using this system, a lender, attorney or other mortgage facilitator will scan, fax or transfer the hand written or typed completed application papers to the company (EDS). The company processes and compiles the information from the application papers and generates electronic versions of the closing documents. Before or during a closing, a facilitator can access ACDS by modem or dedicated phone line to review this information. This system is accessed using a computer that is connected to the company's electronic image repository. At the closing table, the parties can visually inspect the closing documents displayed on a computer monitor. What is more, ACDS uses well-known signature digitizer pads to add party signatures to the closing documents. Hard copies of all documents can then be generated or the parties can be given a computer diskette, which contains the visual image of the closing documents. However, even the most advanced systems, like ACDS, while reducing some redundancies of data input and the amount of paper used in finalizing closing documents, do not provide many tools needed to facilitate real estate transactions for the professionals that work in this industry.